Neighborhoods in Paris

By <a href="#author-bio">Stuart Bak</a>
By Stuart Bak
Paris

Paris is a dense patchwork of 20 distinct neighborhoods, or arrondissements, all within the périphérique (ring road). Each arrondissement has its own identity and dedicated postcode (75001 for the 1st arrondissement, 75002 for the 2nd, and so on), to make it easier to discover at a glance where the hotel, attraction or other address you’re looking for is located. Hop aboard for our whistle-stop tour of all 20...

1st Arrondissement

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Right in the heart of the action, the premier is home to a number of Paris’s big-ticket attractions, chief among these being the Louvre. Stroll through the delightful Jardin des Tuileries with its tree-lined avenues, riverside views and graceful Rodin statues, and drop by the Musée de l’Orangerie in its southwest corner to admire the fine collection of Impressionist art, including several of Monet’s famous Water Lilies murals.

2nd Arrondissement

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Treasure hunters rejoice! Here’s where you’ll find many of Paris’s historic covered passages, including Passages des Panoramas, the city’s oldest. Shop under beautiful glass canopies in these atmospheric 19th-century arcades, where you’ll discover all manner of antiques tucked away behind old-fashioned wooden storefronts, plus chic boutiques, cute cafés, well-stocked wine cellars and more. The sticky signature rum babas at Stohrer, Paris’s oldest pâtisserie, on the nearby Rue Montorgueil are also not to be missed.

3rd Arrondissement

The Haut Marais district’s quaint cobbled streets are lined with independent boutiques and several top museums, including the Musée des Arts et Métiers and stunning Musée Picasso, where you can view over 700 paintings and surreal sculptures by the Cubist master, including his Self-Portrait and La Celestina. Pause at the gift shop before strolling to the Marché des Enfants Rouges for some of the best street food in town.

4th Arrondissement

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Overlooking Notre-Dame Cathedral from the Seine’s Right Bank, the Marais neighborhood’s maze of narrow streets is nothing short of enchanting. Take a picnic to the formal gardens in Place des Vosges and people-watch from beneath the linden trees, then wander the arcades that line this charming 16th-century square. Don’t miss the extraordinary modern art collection in the Centre Pompidou, or the equally exceptional ice cream at Berthillon on Île Saint-Louis, a tiny island in the middle of the Seine.

5th Arrondissement

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Within the winding lanes of the Latin Quarter on the Left Bank, you’ll find a dazzling array of late-night bars and restaurants, sultry jazz clubs and Art Deco cinemas. Pay your respects to Voltaire, Victor Hugo, Marie Curie and the dozens of other French luminaries who are interred or commemorated in the magnificent Panthéon, buy a book at the semi-legendary English-language bookstore Shakespeare and Company, and meet cute red pandas at the Ménagerie in the verdant Jardin des Plantes

6th Arrondissement

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Walk in the footsteps of the hundreds of artists and intellectuals who have called boho Saint-Germain-des-Prés home across the years, including Sartre, Picasso, Camus and Brecht. The 6th is also home to one of Paris’s finest parks: the Jardin du Luxembourg. Rent antique toy boats and sail them on the lake in front of the Palais de Luxembourg, smell the roses in the exquisite Italianate gardens or simply pull up a chair and watch the locals compete at the ancient game of pétanque.

7th Arrondissement

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Tick off some of the city’s biggest hitters in the 7th, where you can – deep breath – climb the Eiffel Tower (or picnic beneath it on the lawns of the Champ de Mars), view the biggest collection of Impressionist art on the planet at the Musée d’Orsay, stroll the Musée Rodin’s perfectly sculpted gardens and admire hundreds of years of indigineous art behind the foliage-covered facade of the Musée du Quai Branly.

8th Arrondissement

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Just across the Seine from the Eiffel Tower is a luxury shopper’s paradise. The Champs Élysees is home to the largest Louis Vuitton store in the world, plus branches of Cartier, Chanel, Dior and more. Treat yourself to a colorful box of macarons from pastry master Pierre Hermé or the opulent Ladurée store, then use the subsequent sugar rush to power you up the 284 steps to the Arc de Triomphe’s viewing platform.

9th Arrondissement

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Noted for its beautiful Haussmannian architecture, the lively 9th arrondissement continues the shopping theme with Galeries Lafayette – worth a visit for its incredible stained-glass cupola and terrace views alone. Check out Musée Grévin, a 150-year-old wax museum inside the historic Passage Jouffroy arcade and take in a show at the flamboyant Opéra Garnier, an absolute must-visit for Phantom of the Opera fans.

10th Arrondissement

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Stroll the scenic Canal Saint-Martin, with its picturesque Venetian bridges, tree-lined cobblestone walkways, shaded quays and colorful street art. The 10th is also home to the busy Gare du Nord and Gare de l'Ést train stations, gateways to the likes of Parc Astérix and the Palace of Versailles.

11th Arrondissement

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Place de la Bastille and its weekly markets make the largely residential 11th arrondissement worthy of your time. Head for the arts and crafts market on Saturdays, and visit the Marché Bastille on Thursdays and Sundays, where local producers showcase the finest foods the region has to offer.

12th Arrondissement

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Also mostly residential, the 12th is notable primarily for the magnificent Opéra Bastille, as well as its proximity to the expansive Bois de Vincennes. Paris’s biggest public park, it boasts a chateau, a boating lake, a forest, an arboretum and a zoo among other things.

13th Arrondissement

Street art fans will find much to enjoy in the residential 13th arrondissement. Here, local artists use huge concrete high rises as their canvas, resulting in some spectacular and often huuuuge murals.

14th Arrondissement

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Twenty meters beneath the streets of the 14th, you can visit one of the city’s most macabre attractions. The Paris Catacombs contains a labyrinth of tunnels, with a bone-chilling ossuary that contains the mortal remains of some six million Parisians. A must-see, but most definitely not for the faint of heart.

15th Arrondissement

At the westernmost point of the Left Bank, the 15th offers some of the Paris’s finest views. Board the Ballon de Paris Generali in Parc André Citroën to rise 150 meters above the city, or whiz up to the 56th floor of the Montparnasse Tower for uninterrupted views of its far more beautiful counterpart, the Eiffel Tower.

16th Arrondissement

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There are enough specialty museums here to while away a day or more, the Palais de Tokyo with its excellent avant-garde art collection and the anthropological Musée de l'Homme to name but two. The 16th also adjoins the massive Bois de Boulogne park, where you can go boating, stroll through the woods to the Parc de Bagatelle botanical garden, explore the grotto and much more.

17th Arrondissement

Many consider this residential area to be the real Paris. Head to its charming Batignolles neighborhood for quirky bistros, boutiques and street markets, and pause to feed the ducks and play pétanque with the locals in leafy Batignolles Square.

18th Arrondissement

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Take the funicular up to the Sacré Cœur Basilica atop Montmartre and soak up the atmosphere in cobbled streets and squares that have inspired artists from Modigliani to Picasso. It’s here you’ll find the Moulin Rouge cabaret with its iconic neon-red windmill, and the Place du Tertre, where local portrait painters ply their trade. Get yours done, then grab an ice cream and take in one of the city’s best views from the basilica steps.

19th Arrondissement

Green space abounds out in the 19th, where hilly Parc des Buttes-Chaumont offers some of Paris’s best views, as well as an Eiffel-designed suspension bridge, secret grotto and artificial waterfall. Nearby Parc de la Villette is a cultural mecca, home to the biggest science museum in Europe, an IMAX cinema, plus several music venues and theaters. Visit in summer for its open-air cinema and the temporary artificial beach at nearby Bassin de la Villette.

20th Arrondissement

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Last but by no means least, the 20th arrondissement boasts cool street art, independent boutiques and the second-biggest Chinatown in Paris. It’s also here that you’ll find the vast Père Lachaise Cemetery. You could spend many hours wandering the cemetery’s wide avenues and visiting the ornate tombs and monuments where great artistic figures including Oscar Wilde, Jim Morrison, Sarah Bernhardt, Chopin and Édith Piaf are interred.

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Stuart Bak
Stuart Bak
Freelance travel writer

Stu caught the travel bug at an early age, thanks to childhood road trips to the south of France squeezed into the back of a Ford Cortina with two brothers and a Sony Walkman. Now a freelance writer living on the Norfolk coast, Stu has produced content for travel giants including Frommer’s, British Airways, Expedia, Mr & Mrs Smith, and now Go City. His most memorable travel experiences include drinking kava with the locals in Fiji and pranging a taxi driver’s car in the Honduran capital.

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Couple holding a heart-shaped umbrella in front of the Eiffel Tower.
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Things to do in Paris when it Rains

Paris is that rarest of creatures: a city that’s beautiful both inside and out. Sure, you came here to stroll those swoonsome parks and boulevards arm-in-arm with your beau (or belle), to hand feed each other fresh fruits and fromages from the famous street markets and, of course, to pledge your undying love (and snap some selfies, natch) on the Pont des Arts. But there’ll be more than enough time for all that nonsense after it stops raining. In the meantime, don your most fashionable trenchcoat and ankle boots and dive into our guide to the best things to do in Paris when it rains, from world-class museums and galleries to chic shopping arcades, cozy cafés and subterranean mausoleums. The Best Rainy Day Museums and Galleries in Paris If you’re looking for something to do on a rainy day in Paris, the extraordinary museums and galleries that pepper the city should be your first port of call. There are well in excess of 100 across the city’s 20 arrondissements and here, for your delectation, are some of the finest. The Louvre This one needs no introduction, but we’re going to give it one anyway. With somewhere in the region of eight million annual visitors, the Louvre is the world’s most-visited museum. Unsurprising, perhaps, when you consider that it just happens to contain the Venus de Milo and da Vinci’s Mona Lisa, alongside many other priceless treasures; a collection that charts the whole history of humanity’s artistic endeavors. It’s the kind of place you can easily spend an entire day (indeed, it’s estimated that it would take 200 days to view all the art on display), so shake off your umbrella and settle in for the long haul. Musée d’Orsay Just across the Seine, Musée d’Orsay’s relatively compact size makes it a little more manageable for the casual art enthusiast. Step through the doors of this stunningly converted Beaux-Arts railway station for the planet’s largest collection of Impressionist and post-Impressionist art. We’re talking pieces by many of the movement’s masters: Monet, Manet, Renoir, Rodin, Van Gogh, Cézanne, Degas, Gaugin... the list goes on and on. Musée du Vin You might think you’ve died and gone to the grape beyond at the intoxicating Musée du Vin, where atmospheric vaulted cellars set the perfect scene for a glass of the good stuff. Discover the history of Champagne- and wine-making in these subterranean limestone caves, once used by the Order of Minim friars in the 15th Century, before sampling the delicious spoils of the museum’s own vineyard. Musée National Gustave Moreau This one’s a cracker, especially if you’ve just dragged yourself in from the rain-soaked streets with zero prior knowledge of what to expect. Spoiler alert: it’s not like the other museums. The former Moreau family home, this eye-popping extravaganza of 19th-century Symbolist art is dedicated to the life and works of Gustave Moreau, known for his somewhat trippy compositions featuring mythical creatures, otherworldly flora and hallucinatory hellscapes. Printed guides containing often rambling commentaries from the man himself, as well as a quite spectacular spiral staircase, add to the disorienting nature of the place. Musée Édith Piaf You’ll regret rien about a trip to the fascinating Musée Édith Piaf, a tiny apartment in the 20th arrondissement that was once home to the legendary Parisian chanteuse. The carefully curated collection of Piaf’s personal belongings here includes photographs, fan mail, platinum records and her famous black dress. Tours are by appointment only. Afterwards, brave the rain to visit the Little Sparrow’s final resting place in nearby Père Lachaise Cemetery. Check out our full guide to the best museums and galleries in Paris here. Rainy Day Shopping And, if museums don’t float your rainy-day boat, perhaps Paris’s legendary opportunities for retail therapy will. There’s everything from luxury mega-malls to grab-a-bargain flea markets and highbrow bookstores to keep the incurable shopaholic entertained, and these three are absolute wet-weather must-dos... Galeries Lafayette Haussmann A trip to the iconic Galeries Lafayette Haussmann can feel more like a religious experience than a mere shopping trip, thanks to its ornate galleries, five-story atrium and soaring glass-and-steel cupola. A cathedral to capitalism, it houses an A to Z of household-name and designer brands; 65,000 square meters of retail space that runs the gamut from Armani to Zadig & Voltaire, punctuated by bistros, cafés, salons and more. Once you’ve shopped til you’re (nearly) ready to drop, hit up the roof terrace (with your just-bought Prada parapluie, natch) for restorative widescreen views across Paris. Pro-tip: Galeries Lafayette also runs a variety of achingly Parisian add-on experiences including a catwalk fashion show and a macaron-making class. Booking is essential. Undercover Shopping Tailor-made for rainy days, Paris’s covered shopping arcades are an atmospheric throwback to more gentile times. Stroll beneath stained-glass ceilings, browse old-school wood-fronted stores and admire intricate mosaic tiling, ornate stucco clocks, and iron-and-glass domes and canopies in these masterclasses of 19th-century architecture. There are 20 or so of these elegant covered passages to explore around the 1st-9th arrondissements, each promising a tempting variety of bakeries and bistros, plus any number of chic boutiques, antique emporia, watchmakers, jewelers and bookstores, where great stacks of antiquarian books pile precipitously in corners and defy gravity on groaning, overstocked shelves. A Bonanza for Bookworms If ye delightful olde Librairie du Passage bookstore in Passage du Jouffroy has whet your appetite for yet more bookish pursuits, you’re in luck! Paris is an absolute mecca for book lovers, not least in the storied streets of its characterful Latin Quarter, a bohemian enclave on the Seine’s left bank once frequented by Ernest Hemingway, Gertrude Stein, F. Scott Fitzgerald, James Joyce and other such literary luminaries. Sit out the wet weather devouring a classic in one of the district’s hip café bars, popping out between showers to bag some more books in the semi-legendary treasure trove that is English-language bookstore Shakespeare and Company. Or wander down the Seine to find the Bouquinistes of Paris: a veritable army of booksellers that line the left bank, offering up a smorgasbord of antiquarian tomes, literary classics, childrens’ books, poetry, graphic novels, pulp fiction, art and more. And That’s Not All... No need to let a little rain dampen your sightseeing spirits. A Citroën 2CV tour is a great way to take in the city sights without necessarily setting a foot outdoors. Fun rain or shine, these whistlestop tours take in all the major landmarks and can cram in as many as three passengers at a time. Take the edge off any potential discomfort by booking one of the champagne packages. Or dodge the downpours by heading underground into the secret city that is the Paris Catacombs – a vast network of bone-chilling tunnels, passageways, sewers and secret chambers. This epic labyrinthine ossuary contains the mortal remains of some six million Parisians, relocated here from overflowing Paris cemeteries in the 18th and 19th centuries. So perhaps not one for a first date. If all else fails, simply do as the Parisians do when it rains: find a cute streetside café, order a croissant and a café crème and find yourself a prime seat for people-watching by the windows – at least until they fog up. Save on rainy day activities in Paris Save on admission to Paris attractions with Go City. Check out @GoCity on Instagram for the latest top tips and attraction info.
Stuart Bak
Stuart Bak
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